George Bailey! Pete Davidson Leads 'It's A Wonderful Life' Table Read
Spreading holiday cheer! Pete Davidson is set to take on an iconic role in the beloved Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life for a very worthy cause.
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On Monday, November 23, Deadline confirmed that the 27-year-old Saturday Night Live star is leading a live virtual table read of the 1946 holiday film. Davidson will appear as George Bailey, originated by Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart, and will reunite with King of Staten Island costar Maude Apatow, who is playing Violet Bick.
Mia Farrow, Ellie Kemper, Carol Kane, Ed Begley Jr., Diedrich Bader, Bill Pullman, Richard Kind, B.D. Wong and Michael Shannon are also taking part in the charity event, which is slated for Sunday, December 13, at 8 p.m. ET. Proceeds from the livestream will go toward the Ed Asner Family Center, an organization focused on promoting enrichment programs for families of special needs children.
It’s a Wonderful Life is a mainstay of the holiday movie catalog, earning five Academy Award nominations following its theatrical debut. In 1990, the Frank Capra-directed film was dubbed as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
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The film centers on George Bailey, who is visited by guardian angel Clarence Odbody on Christmas Eve to prove just how important George is to his loved ones and his community. Odbody shows the troubled protagonist, who is contemplating suicide, how different the world would be without him in it.
More than six decades after it premiered, It’s a Wonderful Life details themes that are still just as powerful in the present day. Earlier this year, Davidson got candid about his own struggles with mental health, revealing that he had suicidal thoughts during his lowest point in 2017.
“I got as close as you can get. I mean, just, like testing the waters,” the New York native said during a June interview with CBS This Morning. “And until I met the right treatments and met the right doctors and did all the work that you need to do to, like, not feel that way, it got pretty dark and scary.”
Despite hitting a dark period, Davidson brought himself back into the light through the creation of his semi-autobiographical movie, King of Staten Island, which premiered in June.
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“I really wanted this to be, like, cleansing for me,” he said of the film. “I feel like I got to speak about it in the biggest way possible, and I could get my story out there. So I feel like, now I could, like, let it go.”
